Southern Ballet, Guitarist To Join Performing Arts Tour

September 25, 1985|By Diane Hubbard Burns of The Sentinel Staff

Southern Ballet Theatre, the Winter Park-based professional ballet company, will have its first opportunity to tour outside Florida next year as part of the Southern Arts Federation performing arts touring program.

Altamonte Springs jazz guitarist Nathen Page and his quartet also were selected for the touring program. Forty performing groups from eight states will represent dance, theater, puppetry and music in the federation's 1986-87 performing arts program.

The Southern Arts Federation will pay 10 percent to 25 percent of the performance fees charged by recognized performing artists to non-profit organizations that book them in the federation's eight-state area.

''To me it's like a feather in our cap. It's kind of an accreditation,'' said Kip Watson, SBT general manager. ''We're going to have our name in a Southern Arts Federation program that goes to thousands and thousands of presenters.''

Page said touring the Southeast will give him a ''wider range of notoriety . . . I'm excited to be accepted.''

The federation's purpose is ''to encourage, stimulate and motivate presenting within our states. And of course it helps support the performing groups, too,'' said Glenda McGee, manager of the federation's performing arts program.

She said the 40 groups were selected from among 120 applicants on the basis of professionalism, artistic quality, touring history in their own states, sound administration and marketability. In addition to SBT and the Nathen Page Quartet, two other Florida groups were selected: Gainesville's Dance Alive! and the Asolo State Theater of Sarasota.

SBT and Dance Alive! are among five dance companies included in next year's program. The others are Chuck Davis and the African-American Dance Company of Raleigh, N.C.; the Louisville Ballet of Louisville, Ky.; and the Sidewalk Dance Theatre of Knoxville, Tenn.

The federation is a non-profit organization supported by funds from the National Endowment for the Arts and eight member states -- Florida, Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, North Carolina and Tennessee. Its board of directors is composed of two cultural officials from each state.